Too Many Frozen Dreams
by Can'tThinkOfaUsername
Summary: "Her laughter and her tears simultaneously echoed around her head- they churned faster and faster, blending into an incessant drone that never went away." Emily is gone. Everything and everyone is gone except Naomi.


Her hand trembled. It always did. _Hold still, hold still, hold still _she muttered to herself, her voice etched with both anger and concentration. She chewed her lip as she finally pierced the skin. _Deeper, deeper. _That was it. She slumped down against the wall until she was crouched on the ground, defeated. When she first started using, it was a search for euphoria and that was exactly what she found. She experienced what she thought to be exultation and freedom- that brief transitory state in which nothing mattered except being with _her_- that flash of colour, elation, being empty but being full all at the same time. Reminiscence was an automatic mode her body just switched into these days- hollow laughs and waltzing eyes and snippets of the others floated by in lavender and cobalt and lemon. _She _was crimson. Memories of _her_ weren't snapshots- far from it. They didn't drift in and out. Each once made her feel like she was being punched and the feeling never once subsided over time. Not even a little bit. _Her _laughter and _her_ tears simultaneously echoed around her head- they churned faster and faster, blending into an incessant drone that never went away. They overpowered every other thought and now, her mind was just a blur and a painful one at that.

Temporarily, everything was a flash of neon. She felt her fingers clasp round bottles and instinctly, she downed whatever she laid hands upon. To say she wasn't thinking straight would be a lie. She wasn't thinking at all. Strangers filtered in and out and she was buzzing. 'We gonna mash shit up' she slurred and that was exactly what she'd done long ago. Everything in her life was mashed to an unrecognisable pulp. It was her fault. She sucked the life out of life just by living too much and she was all that was left. None of that mattered when the room was glowing. It could have been midday or midnight or any time in between. She didn't know. The dingy council flat was damp and the walls were forming a concave shape in her mind, alive with a heavy beat from a downstairs stereo. Her own room was full but she was oblivious to them all. She was dancing, but not with them. She was dancing with _her_.

The hours slipped away unnoticed, colours; whirling colours span round and round and round and they were together and happy. One hour too many passed by and she reached out to run her fingers through the long copper hair. The realisation came all too fast and all too soon. It always did. Familiar tears streamed down her face and the crowd slowly filtered out. She must have fallen asleep because she woke up alone, except for an anonymous couple passed out intertwined in each other's arms. She looked around the room and her eyelids were heavy. Her eyes met an array of vomit. Empty bottles were strewn over the floor and her body was in slow motion. The next two hours crawled by but she guessed it was still night by the darkness in the room. She didn't care enough to open the curtains.

She couldn't remember a thing. All she knew was that she now filled with an overwhelming sadness. Maybe the drinks had caused it but she guessed by the comedown that she'd taken coke or something early in the evening. She didn't care much for any of it these days- she only took it when she wasn't thinking. Heroin was different. It was a part of her. She didn't want it. She needed it. More than water, she was beginning to think. She didn't think she was an addict. She thought she was a disaster. That was all. It was never going to be permanent. It was _here _and it was _now_ and it was _her_. It was _her. _

_She_ left months ago. _She'd_ given up. They'd lost the house. They'd no money to travel. She'd sold it all for happiness and she was left with an irreplacable sadness. After pleading with her to slow down, after clinging on for months and months longer than she maybe should have_, she'd _given up._ She'd _told her to come back when she'd sorted herself out. When she'd 'stopped all this shit' when she'd 'stopped turning into Effy'. The thing was, Effy could handle it. She couldn't. She was too human. She felt too much_. S_he loathed what she was doing but the heroin was a transient block for the gap that _she _left. She could feel again, love again. Love nothing. It had only been hours but her body was strangling her, beseeching for more. She felt like she'd a tonne of platonium strapped to each limb and all she could do was slide down, her pulsing head buried in her hands.

"Oi! You gonna give me a hand with these?" a twangy voice called from the door. A stranger staggered in, struggling to balance three six-packs and a litre of cheap vodka.

"Nope", she muttered, still slumped against the wall. The vodka promptly slipped from the man's fingers and shattered over the floor, colourless joy, colourless poison, colour-blindness leaking everywhere. Her tired eyes traced the path of the spillage until it appeared to seep right through the skirting boards. "I hate you".

The words were barely audible. They slipped from her lips without her even realising and it surprised her to hear the noise. A furious game of ping-pong was ravaging inside her head. Everything that ran through her mind was springing over to one side where it was flung back, forming a heroin-induced muffle so that she was having trouble deciphering between her observations and her own thoughts. It was like a time delay. Her thought process was an alien mix of rewind, slow-motion and normal speed. She wasn't quite sure what the words were directed at. Maybe they were directed at everything. The vodka for causing this. The vodka for changing everything, for making her like this, for making her life the disaster that it was proving to be. The vodka for slipping away. Emily for being the only person she'd ever loved. Emily for making her love her and for loving her back. Emily for slipping away. Herself for letting herself get happy. Herself for letting her self _love _and for walking right into this mess. Herself for staying. Maybe they were directed at nothing.

"It wasn't my bloody fault!" the man exclaimed defensively, "If you had've just got up to help me! Cost me five quid, that bottle!"

She rolled her eyes and she wasn't quite sure why but she repeated it, louder this time. The stranger watched on in a state of bemusement. She was starting to shake and she pulled the sleeves of her sweatshirt down over her hands before slamming her fist into the wall. "I hate you!" she screamed, "I hate you!" The words were overpowering every nerve in her mind, tingling through her skin, slithering through her bloodstream and it was all that she could think, all that she could feel. "I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!" Her sobs were painful and broken, empty and full and her fists were numbing. She didn't care. She couldn't feel pain anymore, just confusion. The drugs numbed everything but her mind was growing more and more tolerant and misery was slipping through. That wasn't supposed to happen. This was always the worst part. The painstaking hour between the night before and the morning after- the brunt of the comedown paired with the late effects of whatever she'd taken- the confusion. She pounded her fists harder and harder. "I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!"

A few moments later, a trio of unfamiliar faces joined the man at the door. They were loud and obnoxious. Their drunken dancing circled around her, cigarette smoke creating a hazy blur over her already hazy mind. They carried on dancing as she carried on breaking. This was her life. She'd lived too much. She was the pulp, the excretion. _She _was gone and it was all just one big comedown from then. One of the men glanced over at her, her pounding arm slowing to a weary pendulum. He exchanged a quick glance with the first man. "Oh, her?" he slurred, "Crazy little pyscho" and they laughed as the night went on around her. Crazy little psycho and too many frozen dreams.


End file.
